"She Loved Much"

“She Loved Much”

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 20, 2014; Easter Sunday, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 28:1-10)  After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, `He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.' This is my message for you." So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

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Here’s a Bible Trivia question.  Who was the first witness to the resurrection? 

As we just heard in the account from St. Matthew’s gospel; it was Mary Magdalene.  St. Augustine called her the “Apostle to the Apostles,” a title that is popular in Eastern Orthodoxy.  She’s also called the “Witness to the Witnesses.”  It seems that Mary Magdalene was the first person to realize that Jesus had risen from the dead and she was the first person to give voice to that realization.

How interesting that in a patriarchal culture, our movement’s first public witness was a woman.  And not just any woman.  The Gospels say that Jesus freed Mary from seven demons.  Whatever that means, it is profound.  A profound condition of lostness, bondage, compulsion.  Maybe because of that image, ancient interpreters identified Mary Magdalene with the unnamed woman in Luke’s gospel who anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment and tears, and dries his feet with her hair at a dinner in the home of a Pharisee named Simon.  The proper people at the table are scandalized, because they know the woman to be a sinner.  She has a reputation.  Jesus should have known better than to allow her to touch him in that way.  Simon and his guests disapprove.

Jesus used that as a teaching moment.  He complemented her extravagant expression of affection.  The punch line:  “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.” (Lk. 7:47) 

“She loved much.”  The crucifixion accounts vary, but the most likely scenario has all of the male disciples fleeing in fear.  Only the women – Mary Magdalene and the others – remain steadfastly within the trauma of Jesus’ slow death. 

“She loved much.”  Legends abound through the centuries about the intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  A few scholars argue that she was Jesus’ wife.  Beyond the speculation, there is the church’s deep, consistent intuition – “She loved much.”  She loved Jesus deeply. 

A sensitive reader of the resurrection encounters on Easter day feels the yearning love inside her.  Mary needs to be near Jesus, even if it is his corpse.  Richard Rohr says “Mary Magdalene is the icon and archetype of love itself – needed, given, received, and passed on.”[i]  Maybe it is because she knew her own sense of failure so deeply that she could love so deeply.  The quality of her love seems to have been something that Simon and the other respectable people seemed incapable of. 

The core of the Christian message tells us two simultaneous things.  First, we are all a mess.  Every one of us is fouled up.  We don’t measure up.  We fail.  We embarrass ourselves.  And then, whenever we do something right, we mess it up by being proud or elitist about it.  The personal development project is doomed from the start.

But the second simultaneous truth is this.  God loves us infinitely.  God loves, forgives and accepts us without condition.  So we’re fine.  You can quit the personal perfection project.  You are given your perfection as a gift.  So stop trying to earn your place.  It’s yours already.  As we heard earlier from Colossians:  “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” 

Mary Magdalene, the women who Jesus freed from seven demons, was bulletproof.  Nothing could threaten or frighten or shame her because she knew how much she was loved, therefore “she loved much.”  When all the men ran away, she stayed.  She was held by love, and she saw the resurrection. 

William Stafford has a poem I like called “The Way It Is.”  I think it is a poem about the kind of love that Mary Magdalene knew.

There’s a thread you follow.  It goes among

Things that change.  But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.[ii]

The thread of love goes among things that change, but love doesn’t change.  Stuff happens – tragedy and death.  But “you don’t ever let go of the thread,” because you can’t.  Love holds you.  Love is you.  At your deepest and truest place, you are love.  God is love.  And God is one with you at your deepest, most authentic self.  We are all loved into being by God. 

Whenever our eyes or ears or heart are open, we become aware of the love that fills all things.  All things, including executions and corpses.  Love overcomes all.  Sometimes it is through our darkest times that we come to the deepest experience that we really are held by love.

I have another poem about that, and I want to share it with you as we finish.  It is a poem by a woman who, like Mary Magdalene, is a sinner.  Nicole is a prisoner at the Northwest Arkansas Community Corrections Center.  She’s part of our Prison Story Project.  Each week for a season we send people into the prison – artists, writers, storytellers, poets, friends.  They work with some of the women to help them give voice to their lives – to paint and sing and write their stories.  The women in the prison all wear the yellow uniform of convicts.  They are all given a number for identification.  They are treated like anonymous sinners in a place with few smiles.  They are doing time.

Here is Nicole’s poem, “Thank You Time.”

Blue lights, radio signals and numbers

No words

There is nothing to be said

Just salt and tears

Lost!

All of it, Everything.

Again and again and again.

Because just one more time,

Is one more time, is one more.

Time

Could be the very last and yet

Death is far less a threat than

Stripes, bars, and a number

Just a number no words

Nothing.

It’s all been said

Sink or swim

Red or black

Fire or ice, not both

And now it’s Yellow

And now it’s safe, or maybe?

A castle guarded day and night.

The walls are the enemy!

Still nothing no words

Until yellow is mixed with colors!

Hope

And TIME freely given

To the numbers

The color

They smile, Smile!

There are tears and salt

The walls are crumbling!

The number is a NAME!

With a story

And a face

Not a nobody face.

Not a scarecrow

Because hope is in TIME

Freely given

It is in ears that are open and hearts.

Yellow doesn’t know why

Yellow doesn’t care color has no feeling

Ahh but TIME cares and the NAME cares

One more life no bars and a face!

Not a nobody face

Not a failure

A name with a smile

On a somebody face

Thanks to TIME![iii]

People wearing smiles and color come behind the bars to give their time to Nicole who is doing time, and the thread of love takes her from bondage into freedom, restoring her identity as a child of God. 

Love needed, received, given, and passed on.  That’s what we do.  We do that every Sunday here.  But all humanity does that every time we let love work in us. 

The message of Easter is this – You are loved much.  God enters all of our prisons with an eternal, loving smile.  God speaks your name, and loves you infinitely.  There’s nothing left to do.  It’s all done.  So in thanksgiving, why not, like Mary Magdalene, “Love much."

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[i] Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, London: SPCK, 2013) p. 180-1.

[ii] William Stafford, The Way It Is (St. Paul, Minn.:  Graywolf Press, 1977), p. 42; quoted by Rohr, p. 176

[iii] Nicole, Thank You Time, written from the Prison Story Project, spring, 2014.